LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 39, 21 January 1916, Page 6

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Mr H. J. H. Blow, 1.5.0., Undersecretary for Public Works, has resigned, and leaves the service, which he joined in 1873, in April, on three months’ leave of absence.—P.A.

A bar of iron worth £l, worked into horseshoes, is worth £2; made into needles, is worth £7O; made into pen-knife-blades,! is worth £657 ; and made into balance-springs of watches, is worth £50,000.

A Press Association telegram states: John Harris, a resident of Marton Junction, was arrested at Hnntervillo last night by Constable Sweeney charged with setting fire to a fiveroomed dwelling on the 18th inst. Accused appeared helore .Mr Hewitt. S.M.. to-day, and was remanded for eight days. Bail was allowed in £IOO and two sureties of £2OO each.

In a northern paper recently appeared the following advertisement written in a Chinaman’s “true” English: “Kaiti; next brick work. Somebody to steal of my cabbage, cauliflower. old potato, new potato, and a. small rake and hooks, fork. Evei\thing. Somebody snatch on Thursday and Saturday night. Perhaps anybody to see the steal man to take something from my garden to tell me about that is 1 will reward five pounds truth, throe pounds tell tale. (Signed) Wong Long.”

The American correspondent of the Otago Daily Times says it is an open seeret that after the sinking of the Lusitania, and American intervention seemed inevitable, Colonel Roosevelt made instant preparations for raising a force of 12,000 men on the lines of his old Rough Rider regiment. Lvery detail had been covered, and the former President calculated that within three months after the declaration of war he and his men would lie iu Handers, But, instead of war, came endless delightfully-written letters from Mr Wilson to the German Government. protesting against the submarine attacks, but getting very little satisfaction from Berlin.

Much amusement has been ..caused (says a Petrograd correspondent) by the announcement made there from time to time to the effect that Aus-tro-German soldiers are compelled by their superior officers to swallow pills Ito induce bravery. These pills, it was stated, have the. quality of appeasing hunger, hut, this is not the case.. They are prepared from drugs [ which have an exciting effect on the human organisation. Those who swal- , low the pills feel slightly intoxicated, j hut the cheerfulness soon departs and there is a reaction. People accustomed to take doses ol cocaine state that the action of the pills resembles that of the drug. Two pills are given out to each man daily. The officers are often compelled to make the soldiers swallow the pills in their piesenc